Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland said last year that he has never been "more energized, enthusiastic, excited, and motivated" about anything than he is about VR. He wasn't kidding. In July, he announced Virtual Rick-ality, a Rick and Morty VR game being developed for the HTC Vive, and now he's launching his very own VR game studio, Squanchtendo, co-founded with former Epic Games executive producer Tanya Watson.
No projects have been announced, but the studio's website at Squanchtendo.com says the goal is to “make and collaborate on funny, imaginative, story driven VR game experiences of all sizes across all VR platforms.” It also provides a pretty good idea of what's in store through the magic of comics. Behold!
“In 2016, Justin met up with Tanya Watson, who after leaving Epic Games after 10 years there working on games like Gears of War, Bulletstorm, and Fortnite, was eager to get into the VR space herself. So with their powers combined, they formed to create Squanchtendo,” the website explains. “We want to make stuff that people love. Games that we want to play ourselves. Experiences that we would like to be totally immersed in and enjoy for hours at a time, as well as shorter, crazier experiences that would be great to play with a group of friends or possibly with stray homeless people that you invited in so you could feed and bathe them.”
The studio name, by the way, comes from Squanchy, “a cat-like anthropomorphic creature” who has appeared in several episodes of Rick and Morty. He apparently has a thing for auto-erotic asphyxiation, which he refers to as “squanching.” Now you know.
